Ending April with Ninjas, Nabari no Ou First Impressions

Spring finally seems to have steadily settled into Toronto and I’m thoroughly settling into some nice manga series. One series that I’ve put off for quite some time and have only fully immersed myself recently is Nabari No Ou.

To be honest, the only ninja series I’ve ever read/watched is Naruto, which I gave up on after the first ten or so episodes in Shippuden (I know, I heard it gets really good, I gotta catch up on dat). One of my friends suggested Nabari No Ou which she said was a lot better than Naruto… I’ll admit that Nabari No Ou is lot less confusing that Naruto, which many of you have likely seen or heard of.

Nabari No Ou focuses around different secret scrolls that circulate among the Hidden Shinobi World. The highest and most dangerous forbidden scroll is the Shinra Banshou which happens to be sealed inside Miharu Rokujou, an apathetic indifferent schoolboy who doesn’t really want to involve himself in the Shinobi world but because of the different Shinobi factions that pursue him for possession of the sacred text, he’s thrown into the Hidden World.

I particularly liked the way the story was organized, from the perspective of the external ninja rival affairs to the personal storylines of each of the characters.

“I like how Yoite’s end was so peaceful, in contrast to how chaotic and painful his life was up till the end.” (Cloudy’s friend Charles)

I read the first two books at the end of 2012 and haven’t continued reading till now and the events were relatively easy to pick up. I believe Nabari No Ou would fall under the category of shonen (boy’s manga) however, I’ll open this series up to every genre. For me, who generally enjoys shojo (girl’s manga), I found this series a very refreshing change from my regular reading habits. As well, the series is wrapped up in 14 neat little volumes versus the seemingly never-ending series of Naruto (which I heard is also ending soon). Also, I have a few friends who watched the anime who highly recommend it as well. Often, stories with a plethora of fighting scenes are best portrayed in film. Not to say that the fighting scenes in the manga weren’t well drawn, they were much easier to follow than the complicated jutsu techniques of Naruto.

…Not to bash on Naruto though. I really loved the series and all its characters, I feel that they’re much more developed than those in Nabari No Ou , however, Masashi Kishimoto has had years and years to build them up. It’s definitely a challenge to write a ninja series with Naruto seems to dominate that entire genre but I highly recommend you give Nabari No Ou a try, whatever your genre-preference is!